


Like Lover and Owner and Worshiper

by ckret2



Series: No Kings Only Monsters (KOTM continuity / related oneshots) [8]
Category: Godzilla (2014), Godzilla - All Media Types, Godzilla: King of The Monsters (2019)
Genre: Bittersweet, Discussion of Depression, Discussion of Seasonal Affective Disorder, Empath Ghidorah, F/M, Mostly Sweet, Pre-Canon, Slight Canon Divergence, Vaguely Reader Insert?, Worship, ambiguous attraction, because it's... in antarctica, tagged it for F/M because it's got heavily romantic overtones but like... not really a romance, the OC is left unnamed so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 16:31:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20660270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: When had their presence been welcomed with such joy? Paralyzing terror, helpless anger, sickening dread, those they were all used to. Those feelings were a sort of rapture, to be sure—the sort of rapture inspired by a devil. But never had they been on the receiving end of a rapture that was like—like what, exactly? Admiration? Love? The feeling of gazing upon something divine. It was so warm. So warm, in the cold.During her lunch breaks and when she was off-duty, she would frequently bundle up and sit in a folding chair near his ice, gazing up at him, studying his faces, wings, scales. She felt like, somehow, he knew she was there. Nothing made her happier than working in the same facility as Monster Zero. It made her almost as happy as Antarctica made her unhappy.The story of Ghidorah's only human devotee.





	Like Lover and Owner and Worshiper

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written on June 23 for the prompt "If you are still taking requests about Ghidorah… Can you make one where the monster is having admirer /human/ and he didn’t killed her, because she is the only one who like him… Felt like I need something sweet like this :) thank you in advance :)))" I kinda got the sense they lowkey wanted a reader-insert fic but didn't want to SAY that, so I left the character unnamed and if anyone wants the urge to self-insert into a super obsessive Ghidorah fangirl they're welcome to. (In my head the unnamed character is Probably Vivienne Graham because after The Shape Of Water every Sally Hawkins character is, by default, a monsterfucker until proven otherwise.)

Few people last very long at Monarch if their first instinct upon seeing a monster taller than the London Eye with claws and fangs longer than their own body isn’t to whisper, “_Magnificent_.”

“Isn’t he?” Serizawa asked, beaming. “Or aren’t _they,_ perhaps I should say.”

“You said there are three heads. I can only see two. Where’s…?”

Serizawa pointed at each of the obvious golden blurs in turn, and then at a murky patch of ice with a spotlight trained on it. She saw nothing through it. “The ice is still too thick for us to see all three,” he said. “But the scans have revealed the whole body. He has two tails, as well.”

“Absolutely magnificent.”

Aboveground, the only thing currently protecting the crevasse they’d dug to reach this frozen titan was a chainlink fence and two very cold guards. There were a few temporary trailers set up nearby, bright orange and flying black-and-white Monarch flags; winter was coming soon, and they’d either have to work fast to establish a base that would hold them through the winter when most other seasonal bases has shut down, or withdraw to an established base for the winter and monitor the site from a distance. Japanese Showa Station was within sight of the crevasse when the weather was clear—had been the ones to discover the titan underneath, in fact—and someone, certainly, was already working out how to arrange for Monarch to move a few operatives into their facility while navigating their strict policy of secrecy concerning titans.

But all of that coordinating wasn’t in the here and now. Here and now, there was only a golden titan, glittering faintly through the ice from the spotlights put on him, and she stared at the blur that was one of his heads in wonder. How long was it going to be until they’d carved and chipped away the ice, and she could see his scales and wings and all three serpentine necks and heads in all of their glory?

She couldn’t wait.

She leaned as far as she could over the railing of the rickety scaffolding that had lowered her and Serizawa to look at the monster, and she brushed the tips of her gloved fingers against the ice.

###

They were used to being cold.

They spent most of their life cold, frozen in the heart of an asteroid they pulled around themselves like a cocoon, soaring from world to world, unconsciously aware of how gravity tugged on their body and how the shell around them changed temperature when exposed to sunlight, but not even dreaming.

It took so long to travel from world to world, longer to travel from star to star. Staring at the same pinprick of light for years without any noticeable progress toward it was enough to drive them mad, enough to make them feel like they were going blind from staring so long at the same point, enough to make their heads ring with the silence and the inability to hear their own roars, enough to make them bite and tear at their own necks just to feel _something_, even if they had to rip off one of their own heads in order to feel. And then they might lose sight of their star and be lost.

It was easier to sleep away the centuries.

They slept now, in the cold, still and immobile. Their unconscious mind was certain that they were sheltered in an asteroid, floating between the stars. Only a few things could wake them from a sleep like this.

One was the feeling of an impact, jolting them awake as they made planetfall. One was extreme heat, warning that they were drifting too close to a star and needed to crack free and fly to a safer distance before falling in. One was other minds, alien minds thinking and dreaming outside of their shelter.

They felt minds now.

Once upon a time, when they were new, they could tell what others were feeling. They had long lost all but a whisper of that sense. They didn’t know if it was because they now moved only among alien minds too strange to comprehend, or if it was because isolation and mutation had atrophied the ability.

But when they slept between worlds, when their eyes and ears and noses and tongues were numb and their touch was muffled by the steady pressure of their frigid cocoon, they could again sense what the minds around them were feeling.

The minds they felt now weren’t enough to stir them to full wakefulness. (They should have been; but they were not, as their sleeping minds assumed, in an asteroid cocoon, but something different and worse.) But the minds _were_ enough to shake them from deep hibernation into a dazed doze, dully monitoring the small emotions floating around them.

They were the usual feelings of industrious aliens—focused and interested, occasionally fluctuating with the pleasures and sorrows and frustrations that came from the daily private dramas all thinking things had. When the aliens focused on them in their cocoon—they could _always_ sense when someone was focused on them—they were interested, nervous, awed, wary.

Except one mind.

One mind was consistently _rapturous_.

Dazed and half-dreaming, the other minds were like distant starry pinpricks in infinite black space, maddeningly far away—but this one’s rapture was like an approaching sun, rushing up to meet them, filling their tired body with warmth, bright and welcoming and heralding the end of a long journey.

When had their presence been welcomed with such joy? Such unrestrained bubbling glee and dizzy euphoria? They couldn’t remember if they had _ever_ been so welcome—not on any world. Paralyzing terror, helpless anger, sickening dread, those they were all used to, those they all enjoyed. Those feelings were a sort of rapture, to be sure—the sort of rapture inspired by a devil. Never had they been on the receiving end of a rapture that was like—like what, exactly? Admiration? Love? The feeling of gazing upon something divine.

It was so warm. So warm, in the cold.

###

Everyone at Monarch, of course, agreed that Monster Zero was spectacular. But she began to realize that most people meant that differently from her. Sure, everyone thought he looked _cool_. What wasn’t to like about a three-headed golden dragon? But no one else was as… as _enthralled_ with him as she was.

He _worried_ them.

The first she realized how widely her opinions differed from her colleagues’ was when she discussed how they were going to safely remove him from the ice, and everyone at the table looked at her in surprise. They had all taken it as a given that they’d leave him where he was—incased in ice that was shaved down enough to let them get a good look at him, but not removed, and given extra refrigeration so that their surrounding equipment and lights wouldn’t cause the ice to melt further. She’d looked back at them in just as much surprise—surprise at _herself_ for not thinking that obvious. Because of course they would leave him frozen. That was Monarch policy. Hibernating titans were left to hibernate: contained in whatever tomb they’d been found in.

That was what they had to do. They had no idea what his personality was like; they couldn’t wake him. They _shouldn’t_ wake him.

Even so, the knowledge that she wouldn’t get to see him fly was devastating.

Everyone else found the possibility of his flying to be somewhat alarming.

Her colleagues saw his fangs, his spined tails, his clawed feet, and saw only the damage they could do. When they mentioned how much taller he was than Godzilla, it wasn’t with a sense of knee-weakening amazement at the sheer grand _scale_ of him, but with the implication that on some level they were calculating proportionately how many more neighborhoods he’d crushed if he ever decided to go strolling in San Fransisco. When she fantasized about what he would look like flying, his wings stretched wide, his scales glinting in the sunlight, her colleagues imagined only the terrible storm his flight would summon.

Everyone had their favorite titan. Even though everyone was wary of the titans’ strength and dedicated to ensuring that they never posed a threat to humanity, most of them—certainly all the scientists, the multitudes of biologists and zoologists and environmentalists—had been drawn to this line of work out of love and fascination. They all, to a greater or lesser extent, collectively adored these dangerous giants. And they all adored one or two more than the others.

Of course, they teased each other good-naturedly about their favorites. Serizawa, who refused to keep a plaque on his door listing his official position in Monarch, once showed up for his shift to find his office had a shiny new plaque reading “Godzilla Public Relations Department”. Years ago, Ilene Chen had received a giant caterpillar doll for her birthday, which was later seen in possession of her sister—holding it up to the glass window in front of Mothra’s egg as though she was showing it off, beaming—and later still in the possession of Dr. Russell’s young daughter, who would sometimes carry it like a baby and sometimes use it in battle against her dinosaur toys.

As the most excited scientist in Antarctica, she quickly gained the nickname Fangirl Zero. Sometimes, when people inquired about her work, they’d ask how her “husbands” were doing. It was always good natured, always laughingly, and with the understanding that _everyone_ had That One Titan and was open to ribbing for it.

Even at that, though, she was pleased that when people thought of her, they thought of Monster Zero.

###

They could track its mind. Wherever it went, wandering back and forth, they felt it. They knew where it slept, because they could sense its dreams. They knew the spot where it spent most of the day.

They knew when it thought about them. Its mind shined upon them like a flashlight, calling to them.

It was sometimes so near to them that, if they weren’t in their asteroid, they could bend down and lick it. And it would stay there, near to them, for so long at a time.

When had they ever been so worshiped? Never—not in a way that was inspired by tremulous devotion rather than trembling dread. When had they ever been so adored? Never—not since they had become _they_, rather than one and one and one all separate, cooed over as a trio of precious clumsy newborns. When had they ever been so loved? Never, never, never.

They were graced with every point on the spectrum of unconditional glorification—the upward-gazing glorification of a worshiper to its god, the downward-gazing glorification of an owner to its beloved pet, the equal-level glorification of lover to lover. How could one mind hold so much glory inside it without exploding? The mere spillover nearly melted the cold from their limbs.

Their worshiper grew unwell from time to time. Its emotions grew tired and dull and unhappy and quiet, like a heavy weight was pushing its mood down from above. Even when it was thinking of them, its rapture didn’t reach the euphoric heights it used to. Sometimes, when it was close to them, they could feel it trying to _force_ itself to feel euphoria in their presence. It rarely worked.

Every once in a while, it would leave. If they focused hard, they could tell where it went, feel its mind curving away in a long arc as it crossed the surface of the planet. When it settled somewhere almost halfway around the world, they were seized with an unconscious grief. The only consolation was that they could tell it still thought about them. Its worship was a star twinkling far away.

It left because something had been pushing down on its mind. They wished that they could sing for it. As their ability to _hear_ emotions had atrophied, they had instead gained the ability to _speak_ emotions. It took them a long time to figure out the exact notes to sing in order to change a new alien’s mind, to enthrall and control it, to make it feel what they wanted it to feel. But unless they reduced a world to ash faster than they could puzzle out the native minds, they always did figure it out. They didn’t want to control this mind, though. They didn’t need to. They only wanted to turn the coffin lid pressing down on its emotions into a vaulted ceiling again. Maybe it wouldn’t have had to leave, if they could have sang for it.

But after a while, it came back to them, happier again.

And so they didn’t fear the next time it left.

###

During her lunch breaks and when she was off-duty, she would frequently bundle up and sit in a folding chair near his ice, gazing up at him, studying his faces, wings, scales. She’d sometimes bring books and read to him—if anyone gave her a quizzical look, she’d laugh and say she couldn’t help but think he must be lonely in the ice. Oftentimes they were myths about dragons, hydras, and serpents, often sent to her by Dr. Chen as she tried to find more historical sightings of Monster Zero. She’d read him a story and then ask him whether it was true, false, or about a different titan entirely. She’d tell him about paintings they found that seemed to depict him fighting against Godzilla, and ask whether that was him or just another titan that looked like him, and what his relationship with Godzilla had been like. Of course he didn’t answer. That was fine. She felt like, somehow, he knew she was there.

Nothing made her happier than working in the same facility as Monster Zero.

It made her almost as happy as Antarctica made her unhappy.

Sunlight was indirect and at times of the year sparse. Even in the summer, the temperature barely ever rose to zero. And except for a few quick, frigid walks she sometimes made herself take for her own mental health, she got very little of what sunlight _was_ available. Almost all of her time was spent in Outpost 32, deep in ice. Even when she slept in her heated room under her many blankets, she could still feel the distant chill pressing in on her bubble of warmth, looking for a way to make her cold.

Most Monarch staff had their permanent assignments somewhere farther north, cycling through Antarctica for a shift of one or two months roughly every couple of years. Nobody wanted to be in the frozen, barren, dark tundra; nobody wanted to share a tomb with the devil with three heads. She was the only one who requested the position, insisted that she be permanently stationed in Antarctica. Because of that, she quickly became the most important person at the outpost: the expert not only on Monster Zero, but also in getting the satellite Internet to work again, in repairing the constantly malfunctioning coffee machine, in finding where the spare bulbs were kept, in coping with the soul-sucking isolation and inhospitable climate at the bottom of the world. She was officially put in charge of the outpost before the construction was finished. Time and again, her colleagues told her that she was invaluable.

But they also told her that they were worried. She understood. She didn’t want to—for a while, she resisted it—but she did. Antarctica sucked the light from her mind as easily as the warmth from her bones. She grew tired, sullen, listless, irritable. The base was full of sun lamps, and she was shipped one antidepressant after another to try, but none of them fully mitigated the effects of being trapped underground and surrounded by ice. She couldn’t stay there permanently. So for three months of the year, from July through September, when Antarctica was its darkest and coldest, she transferred to a post in the northern hemisphere.

And so, she became a reverse Persephone: every winter, she left behind hell and its king, to return eagerly in the spring.

###

They woke as their asteroid shuddered, cracked, and crashed apart.

Waking was a sluggish process. It took them a long time to remember where they were and what had happened: they hadn’t been in space, drifting between planets. They had been trapped underground. They had been thrashed and defeated and discarded. They had been left broken in the frigid slurry of their melted battlefield, too weak to move and sinking. The water had come up around them and froze.

They hadn’t finished with this planet.

They would now.

It was good that there were so many little creatures scurrying around under their feet. The creatures made excellent target practice to resharpen their senses, and the guns pinging pellets off their scales helped to wake them up. They hadn’t recalled that any creatures on this world _had_ guns. How long had they slept?

Not long enough for the little king to die out. Unfortunate. Excellent.

They were awake now—awake and alive and freezing and furious and ecstatic.

But through the swirling wind and ice shards and shrapnel, through the screaming and shooting and dying vermin, through the darkness and the flashing yellow and blue light, through the electric life crackling up their throats—they felt a point of light piercing their minds like it was the only light in the universe.

The little king had fallen—dropped into the pit he had frozen them in—they wouldn’t have to worry about him for a moment. They broke off their search, twisting around, scanning in separate directions for the light.

There, far below, a dark speck on the white ice: one of the vermin fleeing for their lives. There was their worshiper. They had spent so much time unconsciously following its mind around that, even awake, with their empathic sense muffled, they could still dully register its emotions. They had never felt it _fear_ them before. But even so, they could still feel its awe piercing through the fear, in breathless fluttering bursts. Were they everything it had ever hoped for?

They bent down, all together, wings spread wide for balance, studying the vermin up close from three angles. It stopped running and turned to face them, even when the other vermin looked back at it and started shouting.

Within its gaze, they glowed. Yes, they were everything it had dreamed of and more.

It raised a hand, reaching for the middle of them, and they jerked back. No, that wouldn’t do. Electricity crackled across the surface of their scales; at times, they had amused themselves by finding vermin hardly larger than their worshiper and brushing lightly against them to watch them sizzle and fry. They did not want their lone worshiper to end that way.

They would give it a different gift. They had wanted to sing for it for a long time.

They reared back, stood straight, and let out a single, high, trilling trichord. It wasn’t as loud as they _could_ sing—but they didn’t need the whole planet to hear them.

It clapped its hands over the sides of its head, as did most of the other vermin; but they could feel as its mind lifted, floating, filled with light. And may whatever had weighed it down never do so again.

They could hear the little king stirring. If they fought here, their worshiper might be crushed. They gave it one last look—they might never see it again, and a million worlds from now they would want to remember what it had looked like—and then they turned and took off. They flew over the pit the little king was still trying to claw out of, whipped his face with the spines of one tail to knock him off balance, and soared past him as he fell again, daring him to pursue them—away from the vermin on the ice.

They could still feel their worshiper’s love.

###

She could never have imagined how much more beautiful Monster Zero would be as a living creature, moving and tensing and flexing, glowing in the dull light, crackling with lightning. All the simulations and theorizations Monarch made about how he would behave, all their CGI models predicting how he would move, all the scans and samples they used to guess at his biology and abilities, and still he was so much _more_ than they ever came close to predicting.

He was as awesome and terrible as she’d always hoped and feared.

And he had stopped to bend down and look at _her_. Only her. Did he know her? Had he heard her in his sleep? She could barely hear her colleagues telling her to run as she reached a hand for him.

With the sound of his roar, her ears rang and her bones vibrated, and she felt static in her lungs. A moment ago she’d thought Monster Zero was going to be the death of her—and if she had to choose how she’d die, she would choose no other way, even if she would prefer it wait a few more decades—but at his roar she knew it was not possible that he would hurt her. Euphoria poured into her mind like sunlight, like ambrosia overfilling a cup, and her soul sang with lightning. For a moment, she couldn’t see, she couldn’t feel, she couldn’t breathe. She didn’t need to breathe. Everything was dust and glitter and enlightenment.

The echoes of his roar faded, and she felt herself settle back on the Earth; but something had opened up in her. She felt lighter than she’d been in years.

Her knees gave out, and she sank gracelessly to the ice, watching the way its necks and tails rippled each time it beat its wings.

Someone said, “Wow. _Wow_. Did the rest of you feel that?” Someone else said, “Did we know he could do that? That’s new, right? We didn’t know about that.”

Her heart pounding like it was trying to break free of her ribs, she watched him until he disappeared over the horizon.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/185806827337/like-lover-and-owner-and-worshiper).


End file.
